The Day of New Beginnings

Where God Commands the Blessing

 

Jesus said the kingdom of God comes without signs to be observed (Lu. 17:20). It is not perceived with the natural senses of man. It must be spiritually discerned. The Lord has been indicating for some time that we have passed out of one age or dispensation into another. A new realm of His kingdom has opened to us. The church age as we have known it has been primarily an age of soul. God has dealt with the soul of man. Both His disciplines and blessings have been upon the soul. But now the day of spirit is opening to His people. It’s a day where God deals primarily with our spirits, not the soul life. 
 
It’s interesting that in the days of the Old Testament God’s dealings were primarily on the physical realm. God tended to deal with the behavior of His people and the blessings were of a temporal nature. For example, Isaac blessed Jacob (thinking it was Esau), with the fatness of the earth, and an abundance of grain and new wine. A man’s wealth was considered a blessing of the Lord. When you get to the New Testament, everything changed. Now, it was what was in the heart that mattered, not just behavior. For example, Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The dealings of God went primarily from actions committed to intent. Man’s emotions, intellect, personality, etc. all make up his soul. And now the age of spirit is dawning. It’s in our spirits that we really come to know the Lord. Our spirits are the area in which the spirit of Christ dwells in us. 
 
Notice that the three days or levels of God dealing with man are progressive. Each level is bringing His people closer to Himself. It’s only in the realm of our spirits that we know the Lord as He is because God Himself is spirit. The discourse that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well illustrates this perfectly. 
 
John 4:
4 ¶  And He had to pass through Samaria.
5  So He *came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph;
6  and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7  There *came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus *said to her, "Give Me a drink."
8  For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9  Therefore the Samaritan woman *said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10  Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."
11  She *said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?
12  "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?"
13  Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;
14  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
15  The woman *said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw."
16  He *said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here."
17  The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus *said to her, "You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’;
18  for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly."
19  The woman *said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.
20  "Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
21  Jesus *said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22  "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23  "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
24  "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
 
The Samaritan woman spoke of worshipping on the mountain and stated that the Jews said it was in Jerusalem that God should be worshipped. But Jesus spoke of another realm entirely. He said the true worshippers would worship God is spirit and truth because God Himself is spirit. Paul teaches us this principle in 1st. Corth. 2. We must learn to abide in the same realm as the Lord in order to know Him as He is.
 
Unlike the day of soul, God does not deal with our spirits to correct bad behavior, but to enable us to partake of His nature. It’s in our spirits that His nature is formed. This is God’s ultimate goal for man. His life and nature is to be incorporated into our very being (Rom. 8:29 and Heb. 10:16 among many, many passages of Scripture on this subject). As we pioneer this new realm opening to us, we will find God continually putting pressure on our spirits to enable them to fully receive of His life. The human spirit, though housing the spirit of Christ in us, is still subject to the contamination of the Adamic life residing in us. So, God puts pressure on our spirits, squeezing them if you will, until they yield again and again to His will and purposes for our lives. 
 
If we could imagine a giant hand squeezing our spirits, molding and making them pliable and submissive to God’s own nature, then we would have a fairly accurate picture of how God’s dealings are different from days past. It’s in the sixth day that man is made into God’s image. God has brought us to a spiritual day in which man isn’t just disciplined to walk in God’s ordinances, but to come into His presence and know Him in His nature. 
 
Our spirits and the realm of spirit are vastly different from the soul realm. In the realm of soul we would say things such as, “God is dealing with my temper.” The Lord tended to put His hand on various aspects of our soul life to bring about change. We could always connect the dots. We knew what God was getting at in us.
 
We will never connect all the dots in the realm of spirit that is opening to us. The feelings, emotions, and circumstances of our lives will never reflect accurately what God is doing in us. There is no cause and effect in the realm of spirit. The realm of spirit is abstract. It’s just like the name God gave of Himself to Moses: “I am that I am.” There is no “by the numbers” in the realm of spirit. God puts pressure upon our spirits and all manner of things seem to break loose, but they are only the by-product of the pressure He is applying. They don’t mean anything in themselves. They are not to be examined or pondered as in former days. If we can fully accept that our day to day conflicts are a result of God preparing our spirits for more of Himself, and stop looking for a breakthrough out of the very things that are forming his nature in us, then we will have taken a giant step.
 
But what about the soul life? Is there no blessing for it anymore? We have an answer in the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob’s mother Rebecca, helped Jacob deceive his blind father, Isaac, and take the blessing of the first born, which went to Esau, the oldest. The story is found in Gen. 27. After Jacob had received the blessing from his father, Esau came in to receive his blessing. But Jacob had already taken what God had to give through Isaac. Listen to how Esau laments: 
 
32  Isaac his father said to him, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am your son, your firstborn, Esau."
33  Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, "Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed."
34  When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, O my father!"
35  And he said, "Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing."
36  Then he said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing." And he said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?"
37  But Isaac replied to Esau, "Behold, I have made him your master, and all his relatives I have given to him as servants; and with grain and new wine I have sustained him. Now as for you then, what can I do, my son?"
38  Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father." So Esau lifted his voice and wept.
 
We can look at Jacob and Esau as types of our spirits and souls. Jacob represents our spirits. It’s to the “Jacob” that God imparts the blessing. The fruitfulness of God, as prophesied to Jacob (vs. 28-29), is manifested in our spirits. That’s why God deals with them the way He does, and that’s why Jacob went through a lifetime of dealings. He became an expression of the nature of God, as exhibited by his name change to Israel, which means, “God prevails.” 
 
Esau represents our souls. As much as the soul life would like to rule and dominate us, it is denied. Esau cried out and wept over being denied the blessing. And that’s just what we do in our own soul lives as they seem to languish with neglect.  But here’s the thing: Esau’s prophecy, though much to his disliking, said that he would serve his brother. Part of the prophecy to Jacob, said, “Be master of your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.” 
 
Ultimately, our souls will participate in the blessings of our spirits. Years later, Jacob and Esau met again. Esau had previously sworn to kill Jacob. The story unfolds through chapters 25-33 of Genesis. The climax reads thus: 
 
1 ¶  Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids.
2  He put the maids and their children in front, and Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last.
3  But he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.
4  Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
 
Esau fell upon Jacob’s neck and kissed him. There was reconciliation between them. It’s important to note that this reconciliation came only after Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord and God prevailed over him. His name change, signifying the nature of God in him, opened the door for Esau to reconcile with Jacob. The prophecy of Esau serving his brother had mystically come to pass. The soul life finally yields to our spirits as God’s own nature is formed in us.